


McMansion Hell

by MittenWraith



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, Christmas Fluff, Crack Treated Seriously, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Pie, SPN Holiday Mixtape 2018, self-aware and fondly judgmental fourth wall-breaking narrator, truly deplorable architecture and questionable landscaping choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 03:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16824466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenWraith/pseuds/MittenWraith
Summary: It's a few weeks before Christmas, and all seems relatively quiet in the bunker. Sam is preoccupied with kitten videos on youtube, and Dean and Cas have been tap dancing around each other with a slightly more holly-jolly theme. As Dean teaches Cas the true meaning of Christmas pie, Sam finds them a case just brimming with holiday cheer-- a ghost with his own highly individual style who doesn't deal well with critics. Let's watch as they all learn their lessons, with fondly exasperated commentary from a slightly frazzled narrator who shares your pine-scented pain.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Seasons greetings! This is my contribution to the [2018 Holiday Mixtape](holidaymixtape.tumblr.com), lovingly conceived as an homage to [McMansion Hell](mcmansionhell.com). It's also the fic in which I finally broke and audibly muttered under my breath at these nitwits in text. I'm surprised I'd been able to restrain myself this long. :D

It was an afternoon much like any other at the bunker. Well, on the occasion that the occupants weren’t recovering from a recent hunt, or itching to find a new hunt after the doldrums of inactivity had set in, or actively preparing to leave on an urgent hunt where life and limb would be on the line. It was one of those rare in-between sorts of days when it seemed like nothing much was wrong in the world and it was safe to yield to their own personal comfort for a little while. At least that’s how it had felt to Dean while he’d polished Baby to a showroom shine and then scrubbed the sweat and grime of an honest day’s work from his skin.

So, it probably wasn’t much like most of their days at the bunker, if the narrator was being honest with you. The narrator is gonna try like heck not to lie to you, dear reader, because you’ll find that Dean and Cas do quite enough lying to themselves. We don’t need to add to that burden. But enough about us. Let’s remember the state of calm reflection and relaxing distraction the occupants of the bunker have found themselves in on a quiet Monday in December.

As often as possible, Dean let himself sink into that oasis of illusion, only to have the world come crashing back on him just as his thoughts began to veer toward dangerous territory. He’d rigorously trained himself to avoid wondering _what if_ …

He’d spent the previous day indulging Castiel’s interests without offering a single complaint. That in itself might seem surprising even to people who believed they knew Dean well. More than once Dean found himself wondering what Sam would say if he knew what their day had been like, before shaking it off and continuing along with a smile. After all, what could he possibly have to complain about while sharing Cas’s company? His only goal had been to bring as many smiles to Cas’s face as he could. The endeavor had largely been a success.

They’d explored a local farmer’s market, talked with two separate beekeepers and bought honey from each of them. Cas had been amazed that the market was even open that late into the season, when the last of the harvest had been brought in and sold off weeks earlier before the first frosts hit. Dean, however, knew it was the time of year when the farmers who’d set up stalls right through the Thanksgiving holiday were replaced by all the little old ladies hocking their Christmas-themed tchotchkes, as well as every local artisan and crafter trying to convince desperate shoppers that their wares would make the perfect holiday gifts for all their loved ones.

Dean knew it had been a rather cynical view to take toward the holiday market-- and one of the comments he was sure wouldn’t have surprised Sam about their shopping trip-- but he felt at least moderately vindicated when his estimation hadn’t been far from the truth. He still felt it had been worth it to suffer through holiday garlands and angel tree toppers, through displays of pungent potpourri and scented candles and soaps that all claimed to offer a bit of holiday cheer to any home. It had been worth watching Cas’s forehead crinkle in consternation as he deliberated between hand-knitted sweaters and scarves, earnestly asked Dean’s opinion on various jars of jellies and preserves, and seeing the delight and wonder at taking in displays of handmade holiday treats and the crowds of people all scrambling to finish their holiday shopping-- often despite a distinct lack of accompanying holiday cheer in Dean’s estimation-- just because Cas had enjoyed himself.

That’s where the dangerous border between _what was_ and _what if_ lay.

Over the years, Dean had recklessly meandered closer and closer to stepping over that line, only to retreat for one reason or another before working up the nerve to get it over with. On days like that, unselfconsciously sharing in Cas’s delight with humanity and life in general, it felt all but inevitable that he’d eventually stumble over it without thinking and ruin everything, but he vigilantly kept himself in check as best he could, clinging to what he had in fear of losing it entirely.

To be fair, there was typically a very good reason to set his personal quandaries aside, which had made it frustratingly easier to do. It was also why lazy days at home felt almost dangerous in comparison. Apocalypses could be very distracting, after all. The immediate aftermath of surviving and saving the world over and over again had never felt like the right time to put all his potential future happiness up on a chopping block, either. Even in the heat of the moment, on those rare occasions when it had finally seemed like everything was going his way and the planet had stopped trying to off itself, it had always seemed a bridge too far to hope that an ill-timed confession wouldn’t cast everything he’d saved into the wind. Through his greatest joys, he retained just enough fear that he would save the world only to lose everything else he cared about. It was always easier to just keep letting that final bet ride until the next apocalypse popped around to shake things up again.

It was getting harder and harder to remember that resolution, with Cas practically living in the bunker and spending less and less time running off on his own missions. In fact, it had been months since the last time Cas had left home for more than a few hours, and that had only been on a supply run when Sam had been called away to help Rowena deal with a demon who’d grown too big for his breeches (Rowena’s description), and Dean had been laid out with a nasty case of the flu. In a fit of feverish delirium, Dean may or may not have referred to Cas as his personal angel and bestowed vows of everlasting devotion in return for the bowl of soup and packet of saltines Cas had brought him on his return. Cas had the (yes, dear readers, _intensely frustrating_ ) common decency to never mention it again. Dean wasn’t sure if he was grateful, or intensely frustrated himself.

There were more opportunities like the holiday market where they could just pretend for a while they were normal people who did normal things, and didn’t always need to be ready to save the world from the next cosmic disaster. At times like that, when his vigilance wavered and the dangerous thoughts slipped closer to the surface, Dean also remembered most keenly what was really at stake. He’d let himself feel it all-- every stray thought and feeling he wanted so desperately to confess to Cas-- only for a second or two. He’d revel in that moment of euphoria where Cas would know the truth, would know just how much he was loved, and just how Dean wished he could be allowed to love him in intimate detail. In those moments, Dean never let the imaginary Cas he confessed to have a chance to reply before hastily shoving all those feelings back down again, forcing himself to feel content with what they had.

At least that way he knew he’d have Cas at his side, ready to fight when the next apocalypse reared its ugly head (or heads). He told himself every night that it would have to be enough, and every night the thought grew more bitter and his heart broke a little bit more.

But enough about Dean and his woebegotten feelings. We’re not going to ignore them forever like Dean was wont to do, but this is a story, and we’ll get to them in good time. This is a long enough introduction, though, and a storyteller can only drone on about Dean and his internal dilemma for so long before feeling the need to rattle his cage, so to speak.

Let’s make with some rattling, shall we?

Where were we again? Ah, yes. In the bunker, on a lazy, comfortable afternoon where Dean’s most pressing concern-- aside from the low-level concern that never stopped pressing on him which we’ve already exhaustively covered above-- was what to have for dinner. It felt like a pie kind of day.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said, strolling through the library on his way to the kitchen.

Sam looked up from his laptop, where despite appearances Dean was certain he was playing solitaire or googling up puppy videos or something. The pile of discarded books shoved to the other side of the table meant he’d either abandoned his research for the afternoon or else whatever lead he’d been chasing down had ended up going nowhere. Sam’s slightly guilty look as he sat up straighter and quickly hit a couple keys Dean recognized as alt and tab only cemented Dean’s assumption that his brother wasn’t about to spring a new case on him. Dean smiled to himself at that. Between the frosty weather and having no imminent need to pack up and leave on a new case, he had the perfect excuse to spend the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen.

“I was thinking I’d make pot pies for dinner,” Dean said before Sam was fully aware that he’d been caught out actually enjoying himself. “Maybe throw in an apple pie for dessert. Cas bought like six kinds of apples yesterday.”

Dean couldn’t help the anticipatory warm tingle that ran through him, both at the prospect of an entirely pie-scented kitchen, and at the reminder of how adorable Cas had been carefully selecting apples based on their individual qualities and how well they might blend together in a pie. He was startled out of his reverie by Sam’s reply.

“Uh, sure. Sounds good. You need any help?”

“From you?” Dean asked, and then rolled his eyes as he turned toward the kitchen. “No thanks, Alton Brown. You enjoy your dog memes or whatever. I’ll see if Cas wants to offer any apple input, since it was his idea anyway.”

“Whatever,” Sam replied to Dean’s retreating back. But he closed the youtube window where he’d been watching a series of frolicking puppies and typed “freaky news” into the search bar just to spite Dean. He was fairly confident he could find them a case by the time Dean put all his pies in the oven.

⛪⛪⛪

It didn’t take much prodding for Cas to eagerly join Dean in the kitchen for pie making 101, as Dean called it repeatedly. Cas’s skills at blending and rolling out the perfect pastry developed quickly while crafting three small “practice” pie crusts for their chicken pot pies. Dean hadn’t even fussed much over the filling, using a recipe he’d found on an ancient soup can label when they’d first moved into the bunker. He figured Campbell’s Soup was still essentially the same as it had been in 1958, even if he did use a brand new can for the recipe. A handful of frozen veggies and some chopped grilled chicken thrown in the mix, and it saved him the bother of having to teach Cas how to mix up a cream sauce when he was far more interested in the truly important lesson of the day.

Cas seemed perfectly content to ride along in the wake of Dean’s enthusiasm, smiling and nodding at every gentle correction Dean offered. It was rare that Dean was so perfectly happy, and if peeling apples and rolling out dough could bring that sort of smile to his face, Cas was more than happy to comply. Dean had been right about the delicious aromas and the feeling of true holiday warmth to be had from the real deal, as opposed to the artificiality of the cinnamon apple candle Dean had talked him out of buying the day before.

Dean’s quiet delight at the holiday market hadn’t been one-sided, after all. Cas had taken at least as much pleasure in Dean’s restrained excitement at sharing his experience and opinions on everything from hand knitted woolen sweaters to the large scale displays of holiday decor and everything in between. Dean may have believed that Cas was simply happy to experience these strange human customs, but Dean himself had proven more warming and festive than the mug of hot mulled cider and the warm cinnamon donut he’d pressed into Cas’s hands with all the joy of a child on Christmas morning.

Cas delighted in that same sense of joy when Dean shut the oven door with a grin on his face as their pies began to waft their delicious aroma around the bunker. Even if he’d never dare to mention it out loud to Dean, for fear that pointing it out would only encourage Dean to bottle it all up and distance himself as much as possible again. And that was the one thing Cas couldn’t bear the thought of. So as always, he swallowed down his feelings and quietly relished every moment he could, carefully avoiding damaging the assiduously constructed friendship they’d allowed one another. The longer it went on, though, the more Cas was convinced of two things. His relationship with Dean as it stood was the most precious gift in his life. It was more than he’d ever hoped for, and frustratingly could never be what he truly wished for.

Distracted as they’d been by their own baking (not to mention their own tormented internal monologues that sustained them through such trials as _bumping shoulders_ and _watching Dean lick the spoon_ and _Cas feeding Dean bits of different apples_ and _oh no bumping shoulders again_ ), they’d entirely forgotten that Sam was even in the bunker, let alone known that he was diligently working to find them a new case in less time then it would take them to finish their baking.

True to his word, just as Dean slid the apple pie into the oven, Sam came strolling into the kitchen, hands in his pockets and a mischievous grin on his face. He’d found them a case that went along perfectly with the jovial holiday mood Dean and Cas had fostered with their baking. Well, it matched up about as well as Sam’s orange jacket matched his blue plaid shirt, at any rate, so close enough for a moose-sized individual. Shopping is hard when most of the shops in their budget range didn’t have a sasquatch section. Rather than ruin their good mood before they could enjoy the fruits of their labor, Sam waited a solid minute between complimenting the delicious aroma their work had produced and breaking the news.

“So get this. I think I found us a case not far from here.”

Dean and Cas stood shoulder to shoulder (again! And again not saying anything out loud about the fact) at the kitchen sink washing up. Dean glanced away from the sudsy basin just long enough to glare at Sam. Sam perked up at the expected reaction and dared to move a little bit closer, casually leaning against the counter behind them and folding his arms over his chest.

“Nothing deadly yet, but there’ve been some strange reports from folks visiting a holiday display house about an hour from here.”

“A holiday display house?” Cas asked, setting a freshly-cleaned mixing bowl on the counter to dry and then frowning at Sam.

“Yeah,” Sam replied, smiling as he watched Dean’s shoulders tense and then sag, knowing his brother was shaking his head and sighing at the thought of another awful holiday village. “They deck the halls, and then charge people ten bucks to walk around and look at all the decorations and sit on Santa’s lap to tell him what they want for Christmas. They’re raising money for some sort of charity.”

“You sure it’s not Anti Claus this time?” Dean asked, in a tone that couldn’t disguise his grouchiness at the notion.

Sam shrugged, his grin widening. “We can bring evergreen stakes just in case, but it sounds more like a vengeful spirit or a poltergeist. All the incidents have happened at a house that’s been empty for more than five years, and only started seeing visitors again in the last few weeks since they installed the Christmas lights.”

“What sort of incidents?” Cas asked, squinting between Dean and Sam in an attempt to understand what they were talking about, and deciding it was likely more practical and less contentious to focus on the facts of the case for now. If it didn’t become clear from Sam’s report of the potential case, he could always ask Dean what an _Anti Claus_ was later. It seemed important to understand why Dean was so perturbed by the thought of it, especially since he assumed that Dean would be happy enough to attend a holiday village if the previous day’s excursion had been anything to judge by.

Sam pulled out his phone and read out the list he’d compiled while researching. “The first one that made the local paper was a woman who was trapped in a bathroom.”

“Trapped in a bathroom,” Dean repeated, in such a dismissively bland tone of voice Cas was certain he could’ve scrubbed the rest of the dishes clean with it. “How the fuck is that our kind of case?”

Sam just smiled benignly and continued reading his notes. “They called in a locksmith to get the door open. He informed them the lock wasn’t even engaged. The door was just stuck shut. The guy running the event that night eventually called in the fire department to break down the door, and they were gearing up to hit it with a battering ram when it just popped open on its own. There were half a dozen witnesses who said they felt an icy rush of air that seemed to blow it open.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed hesitantly. “That does sound a little spooky.”

“That’s what this reporter, Ian Peters, wrote in the paper. The next day he was flooded with calls from other folks reporting strange things that happened to them at the house over the previous week. Little things, mostly. One guy swears something tripped him as he started down the stairs, but there was nothing there. Another couple said the lights flickered and a dozen candles all went out at the same moment in a cold draft. A family of five swears they saw the chandelier in the front hall swinging back and forth and got the hell out before even starting their tour. Said the house _didn’t feel safe._ There’s half a dozen more here, but every one of them adds up to a haunting.”

“And no meadowsweet?” Dean asked after a long moment as he dried his hands and handed the dish towel to Cas to do the same.

“Meadowsweet?” Cas asked, hanging the towel up over the edge of the sink. “Are you concerned that a Hold Nickar is taking human sacrifices?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah, nobody’s died. And the weather’s anything but mild,” he added. “In fact, I checked the local forecast and it’s been consistently ten degrees colder than average in the area since the holiday display opened. They even had a light dusting of snow the other day. It’s definitely not a Hold Nickar. And it’s probably not Krampus, either,” he tacked on when Dean opened his mouth and held up a hand to suggest it.

At least Cas finally understood what Dean had likely been referring to with the Anti Claus comment. He still wasn’t certain why Dean would have such a strong negative reaction to a potential hunt for one. Dean was about to clear that up for him, as well, much to Cas’s dismay. Dean stumped off toward the fridge, pulling out a beer for himself and Cas, ignoring Sam for the time being. The bearer of bad tidings could get his own beer, Dean figured. He popped off the cap and handed Cas a drink, taking a long draught from his own bottle before catching Cas up to speed.

“The year before I went to Hell, we ran across a couple of Santa’s evil siblings posing as Ozzie and Harriet. They were gonna eat us for Christmas dinner, but we took ‘em down with their own Christmas tree. Dude was like two seconds from pulling my tooth with a pair of rusty fucking pliers.”

“Yeah, well, Mr. Monster yanked out one of my fingernails, so…” Sam reminded him.

Dean just shook his head and took another gulp of beer. “We do not need a return visit from Saint Dick.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his eyes and shook his head. He supposed he’d brought this on himself, but he couldn’t back down now. Nobody had died yet, but that didn’t mean people weren’t still in danger, and they might be the only people in the state of Kansas who could potentially put a stop to it.

“Okay, whatever. I’m pretty sure it’s a spirit of some sort.”

“Pretty sure?” Dean asked skeptically.

“Really pretty sure,” Sam replied, going on huffily, ticking items off on his fingers before Dean could cut him off again. “It’s less than two hours away. We can drive out and look into it in less than a day. Worst case scenario, it’s your average human prankster trying to drum up interest in the charity holiday display and get a little free press, and we get to enjoy a festive afternoon looking at Christmas lights. There’s like a dozen fancy houses in an upscale neighborhood all decorated for the tour, and there’s no reports of freaky shit at any of the others.”

Dean glared at Sam while he continued to sip at his beer, and then glanced over at Cas, who was giving him a frustratingly hopeful face. It was impossible to resist the sad puppy eyes, and Dean sighed, knowing he was going to regret this as soon as he spoke.

“Fine, okay. We’ll head out first thing in the morning. But we’re gonna finish these pies first.”

Sam smiled, satisfied. Dean was almost afraid to push for any more details over dinner, especially as both Cas and Sam had both let the subject drop for now. He felt Cas keeping a close eye on him as they enjoyed their pie nonetheless, their holiday cheer dampened but not extinguished entirely. They had cinnamon apple pie, after all. It was impossible not to feel at least a little cheerful about that.


	2. Chapter 2

The following morning, after a hearty breakfast of the remainder of the pie and several cups of coffee spiked with just a hint of the caramel sauce Dean kept hidden in the back of the fridge for special occasions, they’d packed up and headed out on the road. They’d agreed that their best course of action was to pose as reporters looking to pick up Ian Peters’ story for their unexplained mysteries website. Nobody had been seriously injured yet, and barring the ultimately unnecessary intervention of the fire department that one time, the local authorities hadn’t actually investigated any of the reports as suspicious, let alone criminal. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, anyway, to keep everything out of the realm of law enforcement.

Sam agreed to head to the local records office to look up the property’s history while Dean and Cas went to talk to the journalist. Dean had argued-- quite reasonably-- that all three of them didn’t need to talk to one reporter, and since the town’s records weren’t online and this entire case had been Sam’s idea, it only made sense that he should be the one to go dumpster diving through the dusty archives. Sam grumbled when Dean dropped him off in front of the county clerk’s office, but grudgingly admitted he’d probably deserved the job as Cas jumped into the front seat and Dean sped off toward their meeting with Ian Peters.

On the drive over, Dean had to remind himself several times that they were working a case, and not on some bizarro hunter coffee date. Even when he allowed himself to think about it as some sort of bizarro hunter coffee date for just a few seconds.

Cas took his fake job as a reporter as seriously as he’d taken every one of his fake identities over the years. When they’d sat down at the coffee shop Peters had agreed to meet them at, Cas pulled out a small notepad and pencil with all the gravitas of a man poised to record the word of God. Well, maybe he took the job a bit more seriously than he would’ve if he were actually interviewing Chuck, but the metaphor still held, because most people didn’t know that God didn’t take himself all that seriously. Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t the best metaphor at all…

Dean set a small voice recorder down on the table instead of bothering with a notepad, and gave Cas an approving nod as Ian sat down across from them with a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich.

“So, what can I do for you fellas?” the man asked before taking a bite of his sandwich and regarding them skeptically.

“Is there anything you can tell us that wasn’t in your articles? Anything you’ve learned that seemed too bizarre to print?” Cas asked, ready to take notes on whatever Ian said.

Instead of speaking, Ian chewed over Cas’s question and his sandwich, making the most of the time to size up Dean and Cas. All they’d told him was that they were launching a new website dedicated to uncovering the truth behind apparently supernatural phenomena. Dean had been deliberately vague when describing their intent with their fictional website, hoping to cast as wide a net as possible. He hadn’t been sure if Ian would be the type to dismiss them without a thought if he believed they were a couple of crackpots, but no journalist he’d ever met could resist a puzzle. Or a free lunch. So Dean had given him one of each. When Ian finally swallowed, he seemed satisfied enough with both of them to answer.

“Just more of the same, really. Lot of the callers were duplicate tips. Folks who’d seen the same incident from a different vantage point. But I didn’t leave anything out of the article.”

Dean nodded, making a satisfied face at that reply. “And there’s never been any unusual incidents at the house before? It all just started when the holiday decorations went up?”

There’d been a debate in the car that morning whether it was likely the haunting could be connected to one of the decorations that had been brought in recently, and not to the house itself. Both theories were equally plausible, but Dean had been holding out hope it was a cursed object while Sam had stuck to his initial assessment that it was a straight-up haunting. Dean had grumbled knowing a haunting typically meant digging up a grave, and cursed objects could just be shoved in a box and locked away in one of their storage rooms back at the bunker. Boxing up artifacts was typically a lot easier on the back than gravedigging, so he’d considered that an entirely sound reason to hope for the easiest possible solution. Which meant it was probably a ghost and he’d need to dig up at least one grave before they were done. His back began to ache preemptively as Ian finished chewing and answered him.

“Nothing I’ve been able to dig up. There was nothing on the land before 1985, when Bronson Delmar bought it and built the house there. He lived there until he died about five years ago. It’s been in probate ever since.”

“You say the previous owner died?” Cas asked, his pencil perking up. “Did he die in the house?”

Ian shook his head and washed his sandwich down with a swig of coffee. “Nah, plane crash somewhere. Argentina or Afghanistan or someplace like that.”

Cas frowned at that reply, and was about to inform Ian that Argentina and Afghanistan weren’t even in the same hemisphere, let alone comparable in any practical way. Dean cut him off before they could argue geography that was probably not relevant to their current case anyway.

“But nobody’s lived in the house since?”

“Nah. Turns out Delmar only wanted his house sold if he received the recognition he thought he deserved from some hoity toity architect’s guild. He thought the house was his personal design masterpiece, and a clause in his will forbids it from being sold unless it’s added to their list of culturally significant buildings or some shit. It’s a legal nightmare, honestly. I can see why nobody’s been willing to touch it with a ten foot pole. That’s why it was included-- grudgingly, I might add-- in the town’s holiday display tour this year. The trustees agreed to try and recoup some of the costs of the legal battles. They had to get permission from a judge to go ahead with it, even. But the Delmar estate was declared legally bankrupt a few weeks ago, and the courts are done bearing the financial burden of keeping the place from crumbling before they can sell it, so they agreed.”

Dean grumbled at this, because like Sam had been insisting, it pointed to a disgruntled ghost. Even if Delmar hadn’t died in the house, he’d obviously had a potentially unhealthy personal emotional attachment to it. Dean still thought it was worth one more push on the cursed object front.

“And the decorations they put up, were they brought in just for the event?”

Peters shook his head, but then shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I assumed they were bought by the coordinating committee that runs the holiday walk. It’s all done through the Chamber of Commerce. Local businesses sponsor the displays at each house. They fund the decorations and get to plant a sign in the front yard of the house they sponsor. It’s good PR for them, and the community thinks it’s a nice gesture. They got a local decorating firm to design all the installations. You can ask them where all that stuff came from if you think it’s important for your story.” Ian scribbled the name of the firm down on a napkin and pushed it across the table to Dean with a smirk that matched the tone of his voice.

At least Dean now had the measure of the guy. Peters was happy to humor the idiot crackpot website guys and enjoy the free lunch. It was part of their cover to play along, but Dean hated playing along with guys like this. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t if there was even a slim chance of getting them out of a graveyard shift. He pocketed the note with a forced smile and vaguely wished he could rewind to yesterday before Sam found them this obnoxious case.

“Are there any historical artifacts or antique decorations among the displays?” Cas asked, even though his pencil was drooping as heavily as Dean’s enthusiasm was. Now that he was human, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to digging up graves, either.

Ian just laughed in reply, nearly choking on his sandwich. Dean was ready to get up and perform the Heimlich on the guy, but thankfully it wasn’t necessary. “If there’s anything historical in that house, it’s the sheer quantity of ugly he managed to cram into a single building. I don’t know anything about architecture, but my vote would be for that professional association to give the guy a medal for worst architecting. Since they can’t bulldoze the place and start over, might as well call a spade a shovel and start digging.”

Dean and Cas exchanged a wary glance, but before either of them could figure out what to ask next, Ian caught his breath and sighed.

“The annual holiday tour has been a winter fixture here in Hays for the last thirty years or so. It’s an honor to be chosen to participate. The same dozen or so homes and a local park have been invited for as long as anyone can remember, so there was already a bit of an uproar over another house being added to the list at the last minute. Especially that particular house.”

“Did the committee not want to include it on the tour?” Cas asked, hoping like Dean that the strange events could still somehow be pinned to a local scandal, or even witchcraft if someone with any sort of power was less than enthusiastic about being upstaged. Dean perked up in his seat a little bit at the possibility, and with an approving nod at Cas, let him continue his line of questioning. “Was there anyone particularly upset about it?”

Ian shook his head and leaned his forearms on the table, as if about to share confidential information. “It’s just that all the other buildings are historically relevant, or important to the town in some way, or else just… nice. You know? Pretty buildings. Houses with elaborate gardens like Thomas Kinkade’s wet dreams. Delmar’s house has been a blight on the landscape since he first brought his blueprints to the clerk’s office to file for building permits. The fact he planted his monstrosity right in the historical district pissed off pretty much everyone in town.”

“You said the town was looking to recoup some of their legal costs over the house,” Dean said. “You think any of the other homeowners are pissed their share of the profits are shrinking to cover that tab?”

Ian actually looked affronted at the notion and slashed at the air with one hand. “No way. All the money every year has gone to a charity voted on by all the participants. The town was gonna institute a special tax to property owners in their neighborhood to cover the legal expenses they incurred fighting to unload the property. The other homeowners were happy to share out that burden around the whole town, especially if it meant there would finally be a light at the end of the tunnel for this whole nightmare.”

“What do you mean?” Cas asked warily, shooting Dean a resigned, knowing glance.

“I mean, since the estate is bankrupt, with enough support from the town, they could force the courts to vacate Delmar’s will entirely and finally sell the property, with or without the seal of approval from the architectural guild.”

Dean nodded along, hoping he was understanding all the legal mumbo jumbo-- and hoping Sam and his pre-law brain were uncovering all this info in the county records just in case he missed any of the nuances. “So who stands to profit from that sale? Delmar have any relatives waiting to cash in?”

“Nope. The profit from any sale of the property, according to his will, would be held in trust in perpetuity to fund the cost of maintaining the property to his exact specifications. But now, if his will is declared void, the profits would revert to the county. The court still hasn’t decided what to do with the money, beyond repaying the debts they’ve already incurred from the whole mess. Considering nobody wants to live in the house as it is, I think they’re probably gonna have to sell it at a loss anyway.”

“How badly do the people of this town want that house to go away?” Cas asked under his breath, shaking his head.

Ian snorted and then sighed. “You would not believe, pal. Like I said, it’s a blight on the whole neighborhood, and has been for the last thirty years. You should really go out and take a look for yourselves. You’ll understand immediately.”

Dean and Cas shared one last conspiratorial glance before Dean stood up and stuck his hand out for Ian to shake. “I think we’ll do that. Thanks for your time. Can we call you if we have any more questions?”

“Sure thing,” Ian replied. “And call me if you come up with any answers.”

“Will do,” Dean said, nodding resolutely as he and Cas left the coffee shop.

Dean waited until they were out on the sidewalk, halfway down the block from the restaurant before bellowing out a hearty  _ son of a bitch _ . Cas replied with a knowing look of dread and a half-hearted suggestion.

“It’s possible that one of the other homeowners in the neighborhood is merely attempting to further devalue the property to force the sale. You told me how the owners of Lizzie Borden’s house had faked all those signs of a haunting in order to draw in gullible customers. Perhaps someone is trying to trick people into believing this house is haunted in order to bring the legal settlement to a close more quickly.”

Dean raised an eyebrow at Cas as he opened the door to the Impala and then leaned his arms on the roof. “You saying there’s some sort of shady real estate developer hiding in the basement with a rubber mask biding his time and driving down the property value? Because that sounds like some Scooby Doo shit right there.”

Cas heaved a sigh and opened his door, slumping into his seat while Dean grinned at him. “As long as you don’t wear the ascot I think we’ll be safe from cartoon villains.”

“Don’t worry, then. I left it at home,” Dean replied, sliding into his seat. “I guess we should swing by the clerk’s office and pick up Sammy before we go poking around the house. Maybe he’s found something useful.”

“You mean something that would preclude us from digging up a grave tonight?” Cas suggested, a thread of hope in his voice.

Dean resolutely set his jaw, not allowing himself to hope that much. He knew how these things typically went. See his entire life history for proof. “I doubt it, the way this case is going, but we can think positive.”

They drove a few blocks before Dean snorted out a laugh, drawing a curious look from Cas. Dean just shook his head, grinning back while they waited at a red light.

“We got one positive thing to go on. We got a decent cup of coffee while Sam probably spent the last hour digging through musty old paperwork in a dank corner of a basement.”

Cas frowned for a moment and then let himself smile at Dean’s apparent glee. Dean’s happiness was always a positive thing, in Cas’s estimation, even if he couldn’t be too happy if it came at Sam’s expense. But Dean did have a point. “It was a good cup of coffee.”

What Cas didn’t say out loud was that any time spent in Dean’s company was time well spent. Dean also neglected to give voice to a similar sentiment he felt about Cas. And the narrator continued to despair for the both of them.


	3. Chapter 3

“So get this,” Sam said, sliding into the back seat with a file box in his lap.

“What, not even a hello?” Dean asked, turning around to glare at Sam and back out of the parking spot in a single move. Multitasking at its finest. He shot Cas a satisfied smirk as he turned back around to put the car in drive. “Me and Cas thought we should go check out the Delmar house while it’s still daylight, since the tour groups will start showing up at dusk when they turn the lights on. That okay with you?”

Sam shrugged, then nodded. He set the box on the seat next to him and pulled out a couple of files, and then checked the time. “I called the Chamber of Commerce, and the tour coordinator is gonna meet us there in half an hour.”

“Good thinking,” Dean replied, heading in the general direction of the house but not wanting to show up too soon and end up looking like they were stalking the place before the coordinator arrived. “At least we won’t have to break in. Did you find anything useful in the Pit of Despair?”

“Maybe. I got a copy of Delmar’s death certificate and his will. He was killed in a freak parasailing accident in Australia.”

Cas made a pained noise at that revelation and Dean had to force himself not to laugh. Sam didn’t miss either of those things and couldn’t resist asking. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Ian Peters is woefully ill-informed for a journalist.” Cas replied.

“Maybe he just glossed over that shit because he was more focused on the local mystery,” Dean suggested. “Local paper, local interest story, local angle.”

“I don’t know if I can trust a reporter who doesn’t know Argentina from Australia, nor an airplane from a parasail,” Cas replied. “Are we sure that any of his article is reliable?”

Dean struggled mightily to control his face and stay intently focused on the light traffic at a four way stop, but as usual, it was difficult to drag his attention from Cas when he was so obviously frustrated. It was kind of adorable, but it also gave Dean dangerously cartoonish ideas, just thinking back to Cas’s shady real estate developer theory. Not to mention a bit of vindication for having to endure being thought an idiot by the guy for half an hour. Sometimes it’s the little things that can turn a whole day around. “I guess it’s something to consider. Does Ian Peters have a stake in any of this?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam replied. “Like I was trying to tell you, Delmar was an architect. He’d built a comfortable fortune designing housing developments for a local contractor, but he hated the work. It paid the bills, but over the years he bid on bigger and bigger projects on the side. That’s why he was in Australia. He was hoping to win a bid to build a luxury resort, but his designs were just… really out there.”

“Unappreciated genius, or raving crackpot?” Dean asked.

Sam ignored the comment and barreled on. “He had some pretty unconventional ideas of what homes should look like. I think he probably cracked after a decade of designing and building pretty much the same house over and over again, so he sunk everything into building his dream house. He intended it to be a showplace of his biggest and best ideas, and expected his career to finally take off once the public got a look at his masterpiece.”

Dean glanced at Cas in the rearview mirror to find him wearing the same wary grimace he was. They made eye contact for a second or two before Dean returned his eyes to the road and impulsively made an unscheduled right turn. He was even less eager to see the house than he’d been after their interview with Ian Peters. What the fuck sort of monstrosity were they headed toward?

“Uh, Dean?” Sam said, noticing their change in trajectory and looking back over his shoulder at the road they needed to be on. “The house is back that way.”

Dean ground his teeth together and took a deep breath as Cas tentatively offered his own commentary. “I believe he’s…  _ psyching himself up _ to see it. From what Ian Peters told us, the building is… not exactly admired by the townspeople.”

Sam looked between Cas and Dean and frowned. “Okay, but it’s still just a building.”

“It’s a house so ugly the entire town hates it, Sam. And it’s probably haunted by the obsessed bastard who built it. Do we even know where the guy’s buried? Or are we gonna have to search the entire fucking house to figure out what his spirit’s attached to? This is such a fucking nightmare,” Dean muttered, pulling over to the curb and rubbing his face.

Sam’s frown deepened. “He, uh… he’s not buried. That parasailing accident? Not exactly an accident. Apparently he intentionally cut the line and let himself drift out to sea. His body was never recovered. They found the parachute floating about five miles off shore, but there was no trace of him. He’s presumed drowned in the Indian Ocean.”

Dean groaned and gently leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. Cas leaned over the back seat, one hand tentatively reaching out toward Dean’s shoulder before settling instead on the back of his seat. In a quiet and placating tone of voice, he offered Dean one small ray of sunshine.

“At least this means we definitely won’t be digging up a grave today.”

“Small favors,” Dean muttered before finally sitting back up and bracing his hands on the wheel. “Okay, let’s go see this disaster.

They were still a few minutes early for their meeting with Melinda Stevenson of the Hays Chamber of Commerce, but she was already there, parked at the end of the long driveway leading up to the house, standing beside her car and poking at her phone.

Dean got a glimpse of the house between tall hedgerows of overgrown juniper bushes that had once been meticulously pruned but now just looked sad and misshapen. The house itself wasn’t what grabbed his attention at first, but the equally overgrown menagerie of topiary extravagance decorating the entire expanse of the front lawn. Most of the ornamental plant sculptures looked hastily tidied up before having been festooned with holiday lights and baubles. Dean was incredibly relieved he was seeing this in daylight for the first time, because some of the shrubbery sculptures would’ve seemed downright monstrous illuminated only by the red and green garlands of lights he could see wrapped around them. He gave a little shudder and forced down thoughts of hellhounds, and leaned over to comment out the side of his mouth to Cas, pointing to a particularly egregious rendering of what was likely at one time supposed to be a horse, but he still wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“I woulda shot that thing if I met it in a dark alley.”

Cas snorted. “I should hope so, though you might have more success with Donna’s flamethrower. Let’s hope it doesn’t have the power to wander down any dark alleys.”

Dean blinked. It hadn’t even occurred to him how this could all turn out to be so much worse. Digging graves was one thing. Digging up an entire garden was another, far worse thing, especially if the things they had to dig up were also trying to kill them. He had to restrain himself from fetching the gallon of kerosene he had in the trunk and just torching all the topiary creatures on principle. But Sam had already put on his polite face and called out to the woman waiting by the car. She probably wouldn’t approve of impulse arson.

Melinda Stevenson was an older woman, her hair pulled into a lacquered twist at the back of her head. The severity of her hairdo clashed with her festively red business suit and a jolly little sparkling holly leaf with tiny tinkling bells pinned to her lapel. She looked up from her phone and pasted on her own polite face as Sam strode over and held out his hand to introduce himself.

“Melinda? Sam. Thanks for meeting us here.”

She shook his hand and smiled tightly. “It’s my pleasure. Hopefully the three of you can get to the bottom of this nonsense. It’s beginning to affect ticket sales, and we haven’t even recouped our investment yet.”

“We’ll do what we can, ma’am,” Dean replied, trying to look cheerful despite the weird shaggy plant horse thing staring at him.

Melinda nodded once, and without further ado turned on her heel and led them up the driveway, her brooch jingling with every step. Sam hurried to walk by her side, asking her relevant questions about the house, its history, and the holiday tour. Dean and Cas walked just behind them, and only got the full view of the house itself when Melinda went on ahead to unlock the front door while they hung back at the end of the driveway. It wasn’t exactly awe they experienced while trying to take in the monstrosity of a facade, but it was definitely awe-adjacent. Maybe a block or two closer to  _ AAAAAAH _ than awe...

While they were busy staring, dumbstruck, Sam meandered back to their sides with a smirk on his face. He’d at least had a chance to take the full measure of the house and let the reality of it sink in while he’d been talking with Melinda. Dean and Cas had been too busy glaring back at the topiary monsters along both sides of the driveway to focus on the building until now, and it was definitely the kind of place that required a  _ sinking in _ period to adjust to.

“Who the hell would wanna live in this mess?” Dean asked under his breath.

Sam snorted. “We’re really not ones to talk, Dean. We live in an abandoned WPA power plant.”

“Yeah, but at least our bunker is cool on the inside.”

“And the derelict power plant is strategic camouflage for what resides beneath,” Cas added, to Dean’s immense approval. “Whatever this is, it’s not attempting to hide.”

“What he said,” Dean replied. “This is just fugly for no reason.”

“Be nice, Dean,” Sam scolded. “A man sunk his entire fortune into this place, and several decades of his life. It probably drove him to his death.”

“Good,” Dean replied, grimacing up at the mismatched architecture.

The brick front entryway was guarded by four marble columns covered with ivy, now wrapped with twinkling strands of lights. The building to either side resembled a pastiche of at least nine disparate architectural styles, none of which were ever intended to coexist in a single structure. The recent addition of ill-advised holiday decor didn’t do much to tie everything together.

Tudor gables clashed with smooth modern white stucco walls set with irregular multi-colored triangular windows. A widow’s walk extended between a rough stone turret that would’ve been at home on a medieval castle and what looked disarmingly like an actual, functioning lighthouse. There was no one place to settle the eye before having your attention dragged on to the next incongruous feature, drawn along and punctuated with wreaths, garlands and glittering plastic snowflakes.

“It’s not a house, it’s a nightmare,” Dean added. “If he wasn’t insane before he designed this place, he sure as shit would’ve been after living here for a while.”

Sam huffed out a sigh and rolled his eyes. “At least keep your critique to yourself until we leave. I’m pretty sure Melinda already knows the house is a shitshow. We’re here to try and help, not rub it in, okay? We’re trying to stop anyone from being hurt, or worse.”

Dean grumbled something about not being able to do anything to protect anyone from searing eye pain, and if he wasn’t mistaken Cas was grumbling too. But they exchanged a resigned glance and nodded at Sam.

“The safety of the general public comes before our own personal distaste,” Cas agreed.

“I woulda rather dug up a grave,” Dean muttered, but followed Sam to the front door anyway. “Maybe it’s better on the inside,” he said hopefully to Cas as they climbed the steps up to the front porch.

“That seems highly doubtful,” Cas replied.

Cas had been right. Dean had a violent flashback to the holiday market. It felt like it had been weeks ago, and it was only when the scent of pine boughs and cinnamon candles punched him in the face that he remembered it had only been the day before yesterday. Unlike the market, though, Cas was in no way happy to be there. At least there weren’t crowds of obnoxious holiday shoppers to contend with, Dean told himself as if mentally kicking a pebble, and resigned himself to trying to focus on the case. Potentially dangerous spirit trumped tacky holiday decor, regardless of how much it may or may not have pleased Cas.

Dean squinted at a shiny golden angel lit up with white fairy lights on an ornately carved and enameled side table when Cas got his attention by tugging at his sleeve. He glanced over at Cas to see him covertly pointing up toward the ceiling of the cavernous formal entryway. Dean recoiled from the sight of the humongous chandelier dangling a dozen feet above their heads. It would’ve been bad enough on its own, but the pastel circle of life-sized rainbow flamingos marching around a central light sphere was not improved by the garland of pine boughs woven through their legs or the red and green ribbons tied around their necks.

“Holy shit, someone actually climbed a ladder to do that,” Dean blurted out in a stunned, but thankfully hushed tone of voice.

Cas frowned and nodded, offering his own speculation. “Maybe they hired the abominable snowman from that reindeer movie to decorate.”

“That would explain a lot,” Dean replied, peeking around the corner into a formal living room in the first floor of the castle turret wing of the building. A slightly off-kilter Christmas tree occupied the majority of the floor space in the round room, leaving enough of a gap for visitors to circumnavigate the sparsely decorated tree. On closer inspection, Dean noticed that the decorations were actually holiday-themed children’s books tied to the branches with decorative velvet bows.

“This tree was sponsored by the Hays Public Library,” Cas said, reading the card mounted to the doorway. 

“Guess the kids won’t be reading Christmas stories this year if they’re all being used as ornaments instead,” Sam muttered, frowning at the waste of it all.

“Yes, well, the library only used books they had multiple copies of,” Melinda said, clearly pulling the information from thin air and looking nearly as distraught as Sam over that revelation before hurrying them along to a hopefully less disappointing display.

Sam made a disapproving noise, but followed Melinda through the door opposite the tree rotunda and into the ultra-modern living room. The sun shone brightly through the rainbow of colored glass windows, casting the room’s white carpeting and furniture into a kaleidoscope of varying soft hues. But again, the effect was ruined with tacky holiday decor.

“This would actually be kinda cool without all the red and gold Santa shit,” Dean said, holding his hand out in a beam of deep blue light. On closer inspection of the stiff, utilitarian sofa, however, he considered amending his statement. “And if the furniture was actually designed to be sat on.”

A cool breeze whipped past Dean’s head and a bowl of red and gold painted wicker balls toppled off the fireplace mantle and rolled across the floor. Dean, Cas, and Sam exchanged a wary glance, knowing they’d likely had their first encounter with the angry spirit. A silent communication unfolded between them while Melinda tsked and bustled about collecting the escaping baubles and returning them to their bowl.

“Now that’s unusual, but not entirely impossible, right? Maybe the mantle isn’t level. We should probably just leave this on the coffee table for now,” she added, setting the bowl down on the spindly-legged plank of white-enameled steel that passed as furniture.

No sooner had she set it down than the bowl went whipping off the table with such force as to knock over one of the large wooden nutcrackers standing guard beside the fireplace. The waist-high soldier’s mouth dropped open as his right arm was severed, and he went clattering to the tile floor along with the glittery contents of the bowl that had taken him down. Melinda let out a little shriek and cowered behind Sam. Dean and Cas hadn’t even flinched, aside from the angel blade that had dropped into Cas’s hand and the iron knife that had appeared in Dean’s.

“That’s… definitely not normal,” Melinda said, her voice pitched higher than they’d heard it to that point.

“Normal’s a relative term,” Sam replied without moving, keeping himself between Melinda and the ghost’s favored projectiles. He gave Dean a little nod and then pulled out the EMF meter. Unsurprisingly, it immediately began screaming and flashing, confirming what they already knew. It was definitely a ghost.

“What’s that?” Melinda asked, letting the men’s calm acceptance of this bizarre series of events ground her.

Sam turned to show her the device she’d been pointing to, and as he did, the whining and flashing almost returned to normal. “That was fast,” Sam said to Dean and Cas before deciding to lay their cards on the table for Melinda. She’d seen it with her own eyes, but even if she chose to disregard that evidence and throw them out, they had the confirmation of a haunting that they’d been after. “It’s an EMF meter. We use it to pick up the energy from spirits. I’m sorry to tell you this, but this house is definitely haunted.”

“H-haunted…” she whispered, looking up at Sam with wide eyes. “You mean, by an actual ghost?”

“That bowl didn’t fling itself across the room,” Dean said. “We’re working on the theory it’s Bronson Delmar.”

Above their heads, the stained glass panels of the light fixture mounted above the coffee table rattled ominously.

“I suspect that’s confirmation of our theory, at any rate,” Cas replied in his standard unruffled tone.

Melinda just blinked at all of them for a few seconds, trying to reconcile their matter-of-fact statements with the surreal experience she’d somehow survived. “And this is…  _ normal _ for you?”

Dean gave her a pleasant little smile and shrugged. “We lead interesting lives.”

Sam frowned at him and then returned his attention to Melinda. “We’d like to check out the rest of the house, but if you’d feel more comfortable waiting outside, we’d understand. We can always ask you questions when we’re finished.”

Melinda leaned to the side far enough to steal a longing glance at the front door, considering making her escape. It only took her a second to take a deep breath and swallow hard before looking resolutely up into Sam’s reassuring face. “No, no. If you’re staying, then I’ll stay too. That’s why I’m here, to help you make this right. You might have questions, and I might be the only one who can answer them for you.”

Sam smiled benignly at her and spoke softly. “Good. Thank you. We won’t let anything happen to you, okay? We’ll keep you safe.”

She nodded resolutely and stood her ground. Dean had already grown bored again, holding his knife up under a red beam of light and waving it around as if he was fighting an invisible light monster. Cas seemed amused by his antics, which had been Dean’s only goal in behaving so ridiculously on an active hunt in the first place, so he considered it a success despite Sam clearing his throat and making a disapproving face at him. Dean just turned and grinned at Cas while Sam focused his attention back on Melinda, who was still coming to terms with this shift in reality. Sam offered her a helpful prompt to get her going again.

“So where to next?”

She shook herself and smiled sheepishly at Sam before cautiously pointing the way toward the kitchen and letting Sam take the lead. She followed behind him, with Dean and Cas bringing up the rear in formation, all of them ready to defend her from the malevolent spirit should the need arise. Their silent shift from tourist journalists to supernatural bodyguards proved more reassuring than anything else, and by the time they reached the kitchen she seemed more at ease.

Dean was not more at ease. The kitchen provided another rapid shift in aesthetics, from the sleek simplicity of the living room’s white on white starkness to the overcrowded clutter of a rustic farmhouse. Warm wooden cabinetry and butcher block counters Dean was ready to drool over after working on the bunker’s utilitarian steel counters for so long were pretty much the only design features he could really take. Everything else in the large room felt like it was staring directly at him.

One countertop was covered in a polyester fluffy snowscape, complete with a small illuminated village, an ice skating pond made from an irregularly shaped mirror set into the batting, all surrounded by a forest of tiny trees decorated with twinkling lights. The cabinets bore holly wreaths suspended from red velvet ribbons, and a pine swag with pinecones glued to it hung from the rustic copper range hood above the stove. Unsettlingly, everything else in the room seemed to have eyes.

A parade of light blue hens, chicks, and roosters marched endlessly across a border of red flowers meticulously painted around the top of the walls. A trio of pigs watched their every move from a barnyard mural crafted from thousands of bits of tile and glass along the backsplash, while a quartet of sad looking cow-shaped canisters sat atop the kitchen island beside a small manger scene. Once again, Cas tugged at Dean’s sleeve and pointed to the ceiling, where the Archangel Gabriel, clad in a flowing blue gown and strumming a harp was suspended on a length of fishing wire from the light fixture above the figures of Mary and Joseph. Dean didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but when he looked back at Cas, Cas looked mortified.

Several thoughts raced through Dean’s head, along the lines of  _ who the fuck is dumb enough to pay actual money to see this shit _ . He allowed Cas’s grave stare, Sam’s raised eyebrow, and Melinda’s firm resolve to see this ordeal through to at least keep his comments and questions on point.

“So where did all the holiday…” He paused, waving a hand at the decorations, and caught himself before he used a less than appropriate word to describe them. “ _ Stuff _ come from? Was all this in storage here, or was it brought it for the tour?”

Melinda perked up at the mundane question she had a ready answer for. “There’s one room downstairs that was already completely decorated for Christmas. I think he must’ve left it that way year round,” she added, frowning a bit before shaking herself and getting back to her answer. “The rest of it was ordered by the decorator. I think she got most of it at Target.”

She lifted the nearest bit of holiday decor, a golden candle holder in the shape of a reindeer, and nodded, showing off the price tag still affixed to the base. “Yep. $18.99.”

“Maybe we should take a look at the stuff that was already here, then,” Sam suggested. “I guess all the furniture was here, but since the… troubles… only started when the decorations went up, maybe checking out the holiday decor he already had in place could give us some clues.”

Dean shot his brother an unconvinced look, which Sam replied to with an awkward shrug while Melinda gathered her nerve again.

“And you think this will help you figure out what’s causing all this?” she finally asked.

“Honestly? Would you really like to know, or do you think you’d be happier  _ not _ knowing?” he asked her seriously, and then waited for her to think it over.

She heaved a sigh, taking in Sam, Dean, and then Cas, all three of them waiting placidly and patiently for her answer. She’d already seen some shit, and she hadn’t backed down or run away. Dean wasn’t sure if she was still in denial, and she could still turn around and walk out the front door, pretend none of this had ever really happened. He was half convinced she’d do just that, right up until she squared her shoulders and turned back to Sam.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep unless I see this through to the end. I’ll help in any way I can, so if there’s something specific you’re looking for, I think it’s probably better to just tell me.”

Sam met Dean’s eyes for just a moment, but Dean gave a sort of  _ what are you gonna do _ shrug, so Sam told her the truth. “We have no idea what we’re looking for, but we’re hoping we’ll know it when we see it.”

Melinda’s eyes went wide and she took a step back from Sam, bracing herself with a hand on the edge of the counter. “You don’t know what you’re looking for, just that it’s something haunted?”

“Or cursed,” Cas offered, not particularly helpfully as she whipped around to gape at him.

“Cursed,” Melinda said flatly. “Like…  _ cursed _ .”

“Typically by a witch, but sometimes just as a result of a traumatic event,” Sam supplied. “Cursed objects could be responsible for a lot of the strange phenomena people have been reporting, but at this point, we think it’s likely Delmar’s ghost, probably angry that people are just trampling through his house.”

The figurine of Gabriel began swinging back and forth like a pendulum, and everyone in the room silently took that as a sign that Sam’s guess had hit the mark. The four of them stood there, staring as the archangel swung, their eyes following its motions from side to side until it eventually came to a stop again.

“S-so you think he’s here… as a ghost, haunting the house?” Melinda had a strange look on her face as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that that was something sensible to say out loud instead of a hilarious joke.

Cas answered her, far more helpfully this time. “His spirit could be tethered to an object he bore a particular attachment to. If you know of anything that would fit that description, it might be helpful to examine those items first.”

“If the guy had a room full of Christmas shit on display year round, he might not appreciate all the new Christmas shit,” Dean added. “Maybe he’s just got a beef with Target’s new holiday line. Couldn’t hurt to check that out, like Sam said.”

Melinda nodded, snapping out of her thoughts now that she had a direct course of action to take. “I can show you the room, but practically every room in the house is decorated to a different theme. Mr. Delmar didn’t have casual interests. He had passions. Obsessions. And this house was a showcase for all his greatest loves. At least that’s what it says in his will.”

A slight breeze blew through the room, not even strong enough to set Gabriel swinging again. It smelled vaguely of cinnamon, but nowhere near as pungent as all the weird potpourri and candles that had been worked into the holiday decorations. This was light, like a cup of warm cider or a slice of homemade pie. Soothing. Cas sniffed at the air with a curiously raised eyebrow and Sam cleared his throat, again taking that as confirmation from their ghost, or even possibly approval.

Shit, it would really suck to be completely misunderstood one’s entire life, and only finally get a little bit of personal recognition five years after you died, wouldn’t it? Especially if you happened to die as often as the Winchesters tended to. Dean let that sink in just a little bit, not quite far enough to poke at all the things that had gone misunderstood-- or at the very least  _ unclarified _ \-- between him and Cas for the better part of the last decade. He swore to himself he’d find the time to deal with it as soon as they dealt with their ghost. Maybe he had a few of his own internal restless spirits he needed to soothe. If he’d been paying attention since the beginning of this story the way the narrator has, he likely kinda hoped Cas did, too.

Melinda led the way through the kitchen to a staircase at the end of the hall. She flipped on light switches as she went, illuminating the lower level of the house. Much like the main floor, each room was decorated to a theme. The first was a mahogany paneled game room, and Dean only stopped to ogle the ornate billiards table at the center for a second or two before Melinda led them on to the next room. If there had been anyone in their little group dumb enough to sucker into a game of pool, Dean would’ve insisted on playing on the exquisite table at least once.

After Sam pried Dean away from the billiard table, they moved through a home theater room with a projection tv and a huge sectional sofa that looked like it had never been used. The next room contained a sleek black mirror-finished bar and a shiny black dance floor complete with multicolored flashing lights embedded around its edges, a disco ball twinkling overhead and a karaoke setup over in one corner that had Dean feeling an uncomfortable urge to sing.

“This is essentially a wealthy man’s interpretation of the Dean Cave,” Cas commented before Dean could drift over to examine the shelves of records behind the DJ booth. “I believe you and Mr. Delmar may have more in common than I had initially expected.”

Dean’s first reaction was to protest in anger, but looking around the room he really couldn’t argue. There was a distinct lack of beer keg chandeliers, and Dean wasn’t ready to judge the man’s music collection without a thorough perusal, but he couldn’t really object outright. He eventually shrugged and pushed out his lower lip as he nodded. “Gotta appreciate really going after what he wanted, I guess.”

Cas dared a small smile in reply, his heart rate increasing at the suggestion that Dean could respect the concept of  _ going after what he wanted _ . Cas  _ has  _ been paying attention since the beginning of this story, because he’d been paying attention since the dawn of time. Paying attention had always been one of his best things. Assembling the correct conclusion when Dean Winchester had been the object of his attention had always been a far more hit-and-miss prospect. He’d been playing catch up with Dean’s pop culture references, and Dean’s tendency toward sarcasm and speaking vaguely in circles around what he really meant had been a puzzle Cas had been working out for more than a decade. He took this comment as a sign that Dean might at least understand if Cas were to lay his feelings on the line. Poking around the lower level of a house in search of a spirit that had attacked several dozen people was probably not the time or place to have that conversation. He settled for a round of extended eye contact with Dean before Sam called out to them to keep up.

All of the rooms in the basement, just like the rooms they’d toured upstairs, had had a perfunctory garland draped over something, or a winter village scene set up on an available flat surface. Even the disco ball had been lit up with red and green lights, casting the dance floor into a festive shower of sparkles. But the true Wall of Christmas hit them when Melinda led them into the next room-- Delmar’s personal winter wonderland.

She flung open a set of double doors and flipped on a series of switches on the wall, activating not only thousands of tiny glittering lights on half a dozen various sized fully-decorated Christmas trees, but also several model train sets running in circles on the floor, on a massive table in the center of the room, and on a plexiglas track around the ceiling. The cheerful introduction to  _ Sleigh Ride _ piped through invisible speakers in surround sound, and several animatronic figures of Santa, a snowman, and elves at their workbenches sprung to life. It was entirely unnerving, and Cas immediately wished to retract his last comment to Dean.

Dean and Cas looked around the room, unable to settle their attention on anything before being drawn on to the next atrocity. The Christmas themed equivalent to the unsettling chaos of the house’s facade concentrated down into a single room had overwhelmed them for a moment. Sam, however, had found a single focus for his own personal horror in the shape of a plastic deer statue that was uncannily familiar.

Dean eventually noticed his brother entranced by the wide, cartoonish eyes of the deer and stepped up behind him to rest a hand on Sam’s shoulder. Sam flinched at the touch and turned with haunted eyes. Dean gave him a questioning look, but Sam just shook his head and took a deep breath, casting one last glance back at the reminder of the pagan god who’d ripped out his fingernail the winter before Dean went to Hell. He manfully resisted the urge to kick it.

He pulled out the EMF meter again and slowly walked around the room, checking for any fluctuations that might indicate a cursed object or some specific item Delmar’s spirit may have glommed onto.

“It’s making that noise again,” Melinda pointed out after a minute or two.

“Yeah, all the lights and shit in here are electrical. There’s probably more wiring in here than in the rest of the house put together, so there’d be a low-level read in this room even if it wasn’t haunted,” Dean replied, walking around the room behind Sam and poking at the decor. “It’s a pretty consistent reading, though. And not even as strong as the surge we got upstairs.”

“Yeah,” Sam confirmed, switching off the EMF and shoving it back in his pocket with a frown. 

“So… what does that mean?” Melinda asked, hope rising in her voice.

“It means nothing in this room is the specific link Mr. Delmar’s spirit has bonded to,” Cas replied. “His presence here is even weaker than in the rooms that have been altered for the tour.”

“Huh,” Dean said, poking at an angel figurine in a white gown atop one of the smaller Christmas trees. “Maybe he’s just pissed a bunch of strangers came in and moved his cheese.”

“I can’t see why his spirit would be linked to cheese,” Cas started, but cut himself off when Dean turned to him with a twinkle in his eye and a smile it looked as if he was struggling to repress. “Oh, you meant that metaphorically.”

Dean grinned broadly and took two steps to pat Cas on the shoulder. The lights on the tree Dean had been fiddling with flickered for a second or two, drawing everyone’s attention back to the tree. Sam glanced around at everything in the room before his eyebrows narrowed together and he focused entirely on that specific tree, pulling out the EMF again to confirm his theory.

“Dean? I think you might actually be onto something there.” He exchanged a quick glance with Dean to confirm they understood one another. “Keep going.”

Melinda looked to each of them in confusion, hoping for more answers, but Sam’s attention was all on the tree while Cas’s attention was all on Dean. Dean frowned at the tree while he thought his way through a series of unhelpful cheese-related metaphors and out the other side.

“So Delmar’s spirit’s been happily camped out in the house for five years, and a few weeks ago a bunch of people come trampling through and adding shit he doesn’t want here.”

The EMF spiked again, but a different tree closer to where Dean now stood flickered off and on.

“I think he likes you, Dean,” Sam said, moving closer. “See if you can’t get some answers.”

It finally dawned on Melinda what was happening. She followed Sam, planting herself directly behind him and peeking around his shoulder at the unfolding drama.

“So,” Dean said, strolling a short way around the room, everyone else shuffling along in his wake. “It probably pissed him off even more when a bunch of yahoos started parading through every night.”

The flickering lights kept pace with Dean’s progress around the room, as well, and the train up by the ceiling let out a TOOT TOOT of a horn blast as it chugged by over his head. Dean gave Sam a rather helpless look, not having any real idea where to go with this information. It was exceedingly impolite to just tell a ghost you wanted to evict him from his own home, permanently, but Dean had no way of knowing how to convince their newly cooperative spirit to point them in the right direction to do just that. He sighed at the  _ keep going _ hand gesture his brother gave him, and then looked pleadingly to Cas, who pointed at a garland of imitation pine twinkling with rainbow colored lights before pointing up at the ceiling and then making a walking motion with his fingers.

“So the people on the tours,” Dean started, looking for confirmation from Cas that he was headed in the right direction.   
When Cas nodded encouragingly, Dean stumbled on, tripping over the deer Sam had been oddly obsessed with earlier, knocking it over and then kicking it under the train table in a huff. Every light in the room flared and then flickered, and the air temperature dropped again like it had before the ornaments had gone flying upstairs. Sam’s EMF meter screamed at the surge in activity and they all shifted several steps closer to the door, just in case they needed to make a quick escape. Dean licked his lips and tried again.

“So the people who reported strange things happening to them here, what did they all have in common?”

While they’d walked around the room,  _ Sleigh Ride _ had ended, and  _ Winter Wonderland _ had begun playing. In reply to Dean’s question, the volume of the music cranked up to eleven just in time to blast out, “ _ SNOWMAN, AND PRETEND THAT HE’S A CIRCUS CLOWN” _ at top volume. They all reflexively covered their ears and cowered from the battery of sound. Cas was closest to the switches on the wall, and frantically tried to shut them all off with his elbow as the song continued at eardrum rupturing levels. “ _ WE’LL HAVE LOTS OF FUN WITH MR. SNOWMAN, UNTIL THE OTHER KIDS COME KNOCK HIM DOWN _ !”

Shutting off all the switches still didn’t kill the music, so Dean was forced to flee the room, followed by everyone else. He and Sam kicked the doors shut once they were safely in the hall, but the music was still ear-splittingly loud.

“Was that some sort of commentary on your clumsiness, or was it an answer to your question?” Cas asked, raising his voice loud enough to be heard over the music even as they retraced their steps through the disco room into the home theater. Luckily that room seemed to be more soundproof, and they finally could hear themselves think again. They kept moving toward the billiard room, putting as much distance between the holiday horror and themselves as possible.

“What do you mean, my  _ clumsiness _ ?” Dean replied, looking a bit hurt beneath the layer of affronted bravado he schooled his features into. “I knocked over a stupid plastic deer, and  _ kicked  _ the son of a bitch outta my way.”

Despite an overwhelming desire to high five his brother for the unplanned act of violence against an innocent plastic lawn ornament, Sam restrained himself. “Maybe that’s what pissed him off. You messed up his display.”

The light above the pool table flickered threateningly.

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” Dean replied, addressing the light. In the distance, the Christmas carols cut off abruptly and the light resumed its normal soft glow.

“It seems Mr. Delmar is content with your defense,” Cas said.

Dean huffed at him, still feeling a bit disappointed that Cas had thought he was clumsy, even when Dean himself admitted as much out loud. The narrator needed to take a personal moment to have a minor breakdown over the irony.

“Dean,” Sam said, breaking into both Dean’s disappointment and the narrator’s breakdown. “I need you to try something. Reach up and pull the pine swag off the light above the pool table.”

“What, and risk getting blasted with Jingle Bells? No, thank you.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna get blasted with anything. Just try it.” Sam held the EMF meter up and nudged Melinda behind him just in case.

Dean glared at Sam for a minute, but eventually complied. He apologized to the exquisite table before climbing his way up onto the edge, balancing on his knees and stretching up to remove the tacky garland. The moment it hit the floor, a jukebox in the corner of the room sparked to life a piped in some soothingly mellow jazz music, at a normal, not deafening volume.

“So the guy likes Dave Brubeck. What did we just prove?” Dean asked, lowering himself off the table.

“That Delmar’s happy to have you fuck up the stuff he doesn’t want here, and pissed off when you mess with his shit.”

“What, and everyone who had a Halloween experience on the Christmas tour messed with his shit? I mean, Melinda didn’t mess with his shit before Delmar tried to bisect her with a candy dish.”

“It was a serving bowl, actually,” Melinda said, growing a bit bolder as she assembled information. “And I kind of  _ did _ . At least, I was trying to put back the decorations he’d already knocked off the mantle. And, uh, I think I may have suggested his mantle wasn’t level in the process.” She looked contrite, and a little bit afraid that Delmar might try to attack her again. In a quieter tone she added, “Sorry. I was trying to explain away an unsettling experience I didn’t understand. Your mantle is perfectly level, Mr. Delmar.”

The light above the pool table dimmed for a moment before returning to its normal brightness, as if the ghost were attempting a polite nod to her apology. She flushed a bit at the acknowledgement.

“But why did he dump the bowl in the first place?” Sam asked, wracking his brain to remember.

“Dean suggested the furniture wasn’t suitable for seating,” Cas volunteered.

“Well it’s not!” Dean replied, holding a hand out toward the door into the home theater room. “I mean, the dude knows what comfort is. He’s got that awesome sofa in there. The spindly shit upstairs is just for show! You don’t kick back on it to relax!”

The light flared brighter for a moment, and then subsided, dimming slightly and remaining so until Dean huffed at it.

“See? Even  _ he _ knows that. I think his people skills might’ve gone a little rusty over the last five years,” Dean grumped.

Cas frowned at Dean but made no comment. Sam, on the other hand fortified himself to push the limits of their conversational abilities with Delmar’s ghost.

“So being alone for five years made him a bit anti-social, I get that. It doesn’t explain the woman who was locked in the bathroom, or the guy who swears he was pushed down the stairs.”

The jazz tune on the jukebox screeched to a halt and it sat quiet for a moment, the lights flickering until the chorus to No Doubt’s  _ Don’t Speak _ started playing, Gwen Stefani getting as far as  _ don’t tell me ‘cause it hurts _ before cutting off again. The lights around the frame of the jukebox continued to flicker, as if Delmar was actually excited about having found a way to communicate with them.

Dean stared at it, incredulous, before turning to Sam in mild horror, and then attempting to communicate to Cas that he was rescinding any any all comparisons between himself and Delmar, effective immediately. Sam, however looked positively intrigued, enough that he noticed neither Dean nor Cas nor their ongoing silent communications. He took a few cautious steps toward the jukebox as the EMF meter steadily increased its squealing.

“They said negative stuff about your house, didn’t they? All those people made insulting comments about your home.”

The opening guitar chords of a song Dean instantly recognized began playing and he held out a hand as if Delmar had been standing there and Dean could stop him from going off on a verbal rant.

“Devils, got it,” Dean said out loud, and the music stopped while the lights glowed rather smugly.

Sam, looked at Dean in confusion, and Cas simply waited expectantly for an explanation. Dean gave both of them a look that suggested he was considering flip-flopping his stance on Delmar yet again and just moving in to the guy’s basement. Eventually he sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Motorhead.  _ Devils _ , on the album Bastards, in case the song title wasn’t clear enough. He was sharing his opinion of his critics.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open in a silent  _ oh _ , and he turned back to the jukebox. He thought for a few moments about the best approach to take with that information. They still needed to figure out what was tethering Delmar to the house, and he was starting to worry it was the house itself. If that was the case, they’d either need to convince him to let go and move on, or else take more drastic measures.

“We know how much you love your house, Mr. Delmar,” Sam said hesitantly, glancing back at Dean, Cas, and then Melinda for support.

“Yes, the whole town knows,” Melinda confirmed in as cheerful a tone as she could muster while talking to an angry ghost through a jukebox.

“But you could have it forever, all to yourself, guaranteed if you just let go,” Sam started.

The chorus to  _ Little Lies _ by Fleetwood Mac blasted Sam back a few feet before Dean jumped to his defense.

“Hey, it ain’t a lie,” he shouted over the music. “That’s what you get in heaven. Your happy place. We’ve been there, and I’ll swear on anything you got it’s the hundred percent, god’s honest truth.”

Stevie Nicks went quiet and was replaced with Andy Partridge singing the lines, “ _ If there's one thing I don't believe in, It's you, Dear God. _ ”

Dean huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “Buddy, I got a few things to tell you. God ain’t a hoax, he’s just…  _ hands off _ . He makes a pretty decent pancake, but he’s a hack writer and a pain in the ass. Don’t mean Heaven ain’t real.” He hooked a thumb in Cas’s direction. “If you don’t believe me, ask the ex-angel.”

Dean was too busy focusing on the jukebox to notice Melinda staring at him, baffled through his entire description of Chuck and Heaven. Nor did he notice her attention swivel to Cas as she regarded him intently, like his halo might be visible if she stared hard enough.

“I don’t blame you for not accepting my word,” Cas said, also oblivious to Melinda’s sudden interest. “But that doesn’t make it any less true. I once commanded armies in Heaven, fought wars in Hell, and watched over the Earth since the dawn of creation until I fell and chose a human life. I know what awaits me, and all humans, in Heaven.”

Dean blinked at Cas. For some reason, the fact that Cas would eventually die a normal human death was one of the things he tried his best not to think about. It always made him feel weirdly guilty, as if the cycle of life and death had been his idea, and Cas had just blindly wandered into that reality without being perfectly aware what life as a human would eventually lead to. It had occurred to him once or twice since Cas had fallen, but he’d put the thought out of his mind just as quickly as it popped up. Cas dying was definitely not something he wanted to think about if he could help it. But Cas in Heaven? In his own personal human Heaven, floating through billions of years worth of his greatest hits? For some reason the notion left Dean colder than thinking about Cas dying in the first place. With that much history to relive, would Cas even spare a thought for him? Would Dean even register as a happy  _ anything  _ with five billion years worth of memories to compete with?

Sam interrupted Dean’s existential crisis to make a final plea to the jukebox. “You’d never have to endure another unwanted intrusion. Your house…” Sam trailed off and then squared his shoulders and tried his best to keep his voice determinedly steady as he continued, “your  _ masterpiece _ , will stand forever, and you can enjoy the fruits of your labor in eternal peace. You just have to choose to let go.”

The jukebox went dark while everyone held their collective breath. They exchanged cautiously optimistic looks, but as Sam held up the EMF meter to see if it had really worked, the jukebox blared to life and blasted them with the Beastie Boys’  _ Hey Fuck You _ . 

Dean just stood there shaking his head, muttering under his breath. “Well don’t say we didn’t give you a chance to do this the easy way.”

He motioned to Sam and then gave Cas a nudge toward the door with a hand on his shoulder. Sam collected up a scandalized Melinda and hurried her along in their wake. Cas led them all back up through the kitchen and a breakfast nook and side hallway, past several suits of armor and regimental banners made up with Delmar’s initials. Dean bit his tongue about all of it. If the music had been bad, he didn’t know what the knights armed with maces and pikes would do if someone dared to insult them. And therein lay a problem.

The house was scheduled to open to visitors again in less than an hour. There’d be dozens of innocent people walking these halls, and Delmar was already worked up and probably even more hostile than usual. They needed to do something to keep the general public safe, and Dean had a terrible idea that was probably their only way out of this mess at that point. He let Cas lead him out the front door and halfway down the driveway before he closed his hand more firmly around Cas’s shoulder and gently tugged him to a stop. And hell, had he really walked all that way with his hand on Cas’s shoulder? Yes, yes he had, and for once he didn’t engage in a five minute mental debate with himself over it. Dean Winchester was capable of growth. I know, the narrator is as surprised as anyone by this revelation-- including Dean.

Dean let his hand slide down Cas’s arm as he spun on his heel and gave a curious tilt to his head. He hoped his expression in return looked even marginally serious, because as far as Dean could tell his face was going through a series of affectations typically indicative of suffering a mild stroke. He wasn’t ruling that out yet, but doing his best to file it in the box for later. Cas blessedly gave him a small, slightly shy smile that smoothed out into his more standard resting face as Sam and Melinda caught up with them.

“What is it?” Sam said, looking back toward the house and then to Dean again, wondering why he’d stopped.

Dean scanned the entire area, giving the nearest topiary abominations a suspicious glare before leaning in and pulling Cas and Sam with him into a little impromptu driveway huddle. Just in case the beasties had a direct connection to Delmar’s ghost and were running spy missions for their master.

“A couple hundred people are gonna start showing up here in an hour expecting a tour of the place,” Dean said.

Sam gave him the  _ duh, Dean, tell me something we don’t know _ face, which Dean promptly ignored.

“More like a dozen, to be honest,” Melinda replied. When everyone else turned to blink at her, she gave an an embarrassed little shrug. “Maybe less. It’s Tuesday. Most of our tour traffic is on the weekends. Not to mention since the article came out, most of the tour guests have elected to skip the Delmar house. We still get a few who want to see it for themselves out of morbid curiosity or as a joke, but even the thrillseekers have tapered off over the last week or so.”

Dean processed that information. His previously untenable plan might actually work if they only had to keep a dozen or so people safe. It was still a shitty plan, but it was the least shitty plan he could come up with on such short notice. He took a breath and forged on.

“If it wouldn’t look suspicious as fuck, I’d just tell you to lock the door, shut off all the lights and not open tonight.”

“I can definitely do that,” Melinda replied. “I agree. It’s not safe for anyone to be inside that house right now.”

Dean grimaced at her and then turned to Sam, hoping his brother understood why it would look shady as fuck. Thankfully, Sam got it. Sam cleared his throat and put on his most innocent puppy face.

“Yeah, no, you can’t. We’re gonna fix this problem for you tonight, but if you shut down the tour, it could make you look… complicit… and we’re trying to avoid that if at all possible.”

Melinnda blinked up at Sam, confused. “Complicit? In what?” She thought that through for a moment and then nodded, frowning. “I probably don’t want to know.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Cas replied.

“So how does this tour thing work?” Dean asked.

⛪⛪⛪

Forty five minutes later, Melinda was all set up at the foot of the driveway on a folding chair at a card table laid out with brochures and maps of all the tour houses. She and Cas had gone through the house switching on all the holiday lights and apologizing to Delmar in every room, gently explaining that this was the last night he would have to endure strangers in his home and begging him to please play nice one last time. It was agreed that Sam and Dean had likely pissed off the ghost enough that they probably shouldn’t go back inside. Instead, they’d set up their stakeout vantage point behind a nonthreatening rectangular hedgerow in a corner of the garden. The only sign of Delmar’s presence Cas reported on returning was that the jukebox in the billiard room played  _ Comfortably Numb _ on a loop the entire time they were inside. It was a little bit reassuring, but at the same time just a little bit sinister.

Dean let out a relieved breath. Cas had only been in the house for less than ten minutes, but Sam had asked him twice if he was okay because he was so antsy. Sam had the courtesy to keep his mouth shut, but he gave Dean a few understanding, sympathetic brotherly looks, hoping Dean got the message that Sam knew exactly what was troubling him. He only offered a reassuring,  _ he’ll be fine, Dean _ , moments before Cas emerged from the house unscathed.

When Cas settled down on the grass beside Dean to wait, Sam excused himself, took the keys from Dean, and headed out to get what they’d need for phase two of their plan. Dean lifted the lid of the cooler and offered Cas a beer, which he gratefully accepted. It had been a little nerve-wracking going back inside as Melinda’s only defense against a riled up spirit. As the sun set and he slowly sipped his beer, Cas tried to relax and enjoy the quiet moment with Dean. They seemed to have few enough quiet moments in their lives that he’d been doing his best to make the most of them when he could.

He’d enjoyed the last few days at home in the bunker, the holiday market, baking with Dean. It was enough to make him want to believe that Dean enjoyed their quieter moments together as much as he did. Cas watched pink and golden streaks melt across the sky as darkness crept over them and the air grew colder. He leaned back against the cooler and sighed, bumping his shoulder against Dean’s in the process. He’d been about to apologize and shift over, but Dean let out a little sigh and nudged him back, giving him a hesitant smile before turning back to watch the rest of the sunset.

For once, Dean Winchester was not being confusing. That in itself was moderately confusing to Cas. But again, Cas has been paying attention. Rather than protest Dean’s lack of protest, or dismiss the return of the little nudge as if it hadn’t been purposeful and even welcome, he spent the next few minutes committing every detail of that sunset to memory. From the colors of the clouds to the feel of the cold, hard ground, to Dean’s shoulder pressed against his as the edge of the cooler dug into his back. Cas wanted to remember it all.

As the last of the golden glow sunk below the horizon and their world was lit only by the soft twinkling of illuminated topiaries, he let out a contented sigh. Beside him, now that Mother Nature’s evening show was over, Dean had turned his attention to picking at the wrinkling label on his beer bottle. He hadn’t shifted his position away from Cas, but he was frowning down at the mutilated paper, looking more thoughtful than Cas had seen him all day. He was ready to ask if something was wrong when Dean took a deep breath and began talking.

“I don’t know if you remember or not, because you were… you weren’t  _ you  _ at the time, I don’t think.” Dean closed his eyes and took a drink.

Cas waited patiently, because he knew the time period Dean was likely referring to, and he was relieved Dean hadn’t just come right out and said it. What a day it was, to be grateful for Dean not speaking plainly. Cas scolded himself for the thought, and instead allowed himself to feel grateful that he knew Dean so well that he understood him perfectly despite that. Dean slowly looked up from his bottle and gave him a tired little smile.

“Whatever, Sam and I were working a banshee case at this retirement home. It’s where we met Eileen…” Dean trailed off again, long enough for Cas to remember what he could about that case. It had been before Lucifer had completely shoved him down into his own mind and shut off all awareness of the outside world. He just nodded, which Dean took as encouragement to continue. “There was a woman who lived there, Mildred. Helped us solve the case and kill the banshee.”

Dean smiled at the memory, and Cas smiled back, pleased just to see Dean look so genuinely happy. He’d wait as long as Dean needed him to to hear the rest of the story, as long as Dean kept looking at him like that.

“We were waiting for dark, for the banshee, and Mildred made me sit with her to watch the sunset. She, uh, she asked me if I ever just sat and watched a sunset without waiting for some monster to show up.” Dean laughed and shook his head, looking down at the torn label again before sighing. “I couldn’t remember the last time I had, you know, and here we are again, watching a sunset and waiting to deal with monster.”

“If it makes you feel any better, at least we’re not waiting for a banshee tonight,” Cas replied.

“Yeah, we’re not waiting for a monster at all, really.”

Cas nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of his beer. Dean, however wasn’t done. He cleared his throat, and then pressed their shoulders a little more firmly together, so that Cas felt the tension in him before he spoke again, quieter this time.

“She asked me if I wanted to know the secret to a long and happy life. Well hell if we don’t all wanna know that, right?”

“It sounds like valuable information, yes,” Cas confirmed in the same hushed tone. “What did she say?”

“She told me to follow my heart,” Dean said, grinning down at his hands. “That was it. Just follow your heart.”

Cas let that hang in the air between them for a moment, uncertain where Dean’s story was going. “Did you follow her advice?”

Dean snorted. “Spent the next few months trying to save your ass, and then Dr. Phil’ed God and his sister into not destroying the universe. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time to go find myself, or whatever.”

Dean was quiet for a moment, and then swallowed hard.

“But now I think I might’ve been following her advice all along. Only just realized it watching a sunset on a freezing cold fucking stakeout, waiting for Sam to get back with a trunk load of salt and kerosene.”

Cas’s heart pounded, but it was his stuttering, frost-cloudy breaths that gave him away. Dean looked up at him, a sadness in his eyes.

“Not like it matters, but if this is as happy as I’m allowed to be, then I’ll take it.”

“Of course it matters, Dean,” Cas said.

“Yeah, well, I get to watch sunsets with my best friend,” Dean said with a smile and another nudge of his shoulder. “We get to do an entire town a huge favor tonight, and I think we got enough apples left at home to make another pie tomorrow. I think I got it pretty good.” His smile drooped and he drained the last of his beer to make himself stop talking.

Cas squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, working up the nerve to say what he so desperately wanted to. “But what would your heart tell you to do differently?”

Dean set his bottle aside, wrestling over the answer to that question. It’s not as if he didn’t know the answer, as if it wasn’t sitting on the tip of his tongue waiting to launch itself like a fireworks display, painting itself across the night sky in vivid light for the whole town to see. But being experienced with fireworks, he knew better than to light them in such close quarters. Instead, he looked up at Cas while the war raged on inside him, and saw something he hadn’t entirely expected. Cas looked invested in his answer. He looked  _ hopeful _ . It at least gave Dean something not entirely incendiary to say.

“What about you, Cas? Now that you’re human, are you following your heart? Because that matters, too.”

Cas blinked, surprised that Dean would even need to ask. “Of course I am. Why do you think I fell from Heaven in the first place?”

It was Dean’s turn to blink, his breath caught in his throat and all but starving the little firework of oxygen. It sputtered. He’d never really thought of it that way, but there had to be more to it, right? Because of course there did. In all Dean’s experience, he couldn’t possibly be enough for anyone to make that kind of sacrifice for. He couldn’t possibly be at the end of the string pulling Cas’s heart along toward happiness. It was too much.

“And your heart’s desire is really sitting here on the frosty grass in the dark waiting to torch a McMansion?”

“Don’t be obtuse, Dean.”

“I’m not, honestly. I just wanna make sure I’m not holding you back, you know, from finding happiness or whatever.”

Cas stared at Dean until Dean returned his gaze. It was a position they’d found themselves in thousands of times over the years, attempting to communicate with lingering looks and never feeling entirely certain that they’d been fully understood, or that they fully understood the other. For once, Cas decided he’d had enough. And honestly, good for him. And good for the narrator, who was on the verge of reaching into the pages and simply smashing their faces together to put us all out of our collective misery.

“Dean, you aren’t holding me back. You’re the whole reason I’m here. I followed my heart here, and I’ll continue to follow it, wherever you lead. Is that clear enough for you?”

Dean held his breath and nodded, not entirely willing to believe it yet. At least not without poking it with a stick a few more times. The narrator is exactly as exasperated as you, dear reader. Don’t worry, Dean’s stick is about to hit its mark. Er. Maybe that’s not the right metaphor here… Dean might actually have this one without the narrator’s clumsy assistance for once.

“What if my heart tried to lead somewhere you didn’t want to follow?”

Cas narrowed his eyes. “I know you very well, Dean. I don’t think it’s possible for you to surprise me.”

Dean’s head jerked backward as he sucked in an astonished breath. Had Cas just issued him a direct challenge? Dean was tempted to ask Cas if that was a dare, to brush it off as if it were a joke. But from the look in his eyes, Dean was pretty damn sure Cas wasn’t joking. He let out that breath slowly, studying Cas’s entire face, lingering maybe a second or two too long on his mouth, and then without further warning he leaned in and pressed their lips together.

Dean’s heart simultaneously rejoiced at finally having its owner obey a simple directive and nearly stuttered to a halt as a lifetime of accumulated doubt and panic flooded his system. He’d gone too far, surely. Cas couldn’t have meant  _ this _ of all things. Sure he’d followed Dean practically everywhere, aside from the times he’d actively run away thinking he’d been protecting Dean by doing so.

(those times had  _ really _ sucked)

They’d worked through those communication issues, more or less. Cas had declared his place in the universe, in their home, and in Dean’s family. But Dean had never even considered that Cas could want anything more. Dean’s heart had been screaming out for this for years, and he’d shoved it all down so deep because his own happiness would never be as important as Cas’s. For a terrible, eternal second, Dean wished he could swallow that firework and explode into dust motes for ever daring to presume his desires deserved any attention whatsoever.

And then he realized that Cas was kissing him back. Not just kissing, but clutching, clinging desperately to his shirt and holding him tethered to the earth, sliding one hand up his neck and into his hair like he knew Dean would try to stop and pull away. Or else maybe float up into the clouds to disappear among the stars if only he didn’t hold on so tightly. Cas pulled him ever so slowly back to the ground with him, dragging Dean’s body across himself like a blanket and curling one leg around his calf to pin him in place. The kissing never stopped, but only grew more intense as they both followed their hearts, pausing only to stare at one another in wonder and grin with relief and joy.

And that, dear friends, is why they didn’t notice Sam return.

Sam pulled up and parked along the narrow side lane that ran the length of Delmar’s vast property, adjacent to where Dean and Cas had set up their observation post in a remote corner of the gardens. It would be easier and less conspicuous to pass their equipment over the fence than to pull up to the front gate when the time came, and the Winchesters had long learned the importance of stealth when committing felonies.

He shoved his hands in his pockets after leaving the warm confines of the Impala for the frosty night air. It wouldn’t be a long walk, but the temperature had dropped enough for Sam to feel the chill in his bones. He wasn’t exactly in a hurry to have to stop moving and plant himself in a chair for the next hour or so, which gave him the extra incentive to take his time getting back to the front gate. Plus, from his vantage point on the deserted lane that ran the length of the property, he could attempt to get a read on the current status inside the house through occasional gaps in the hedges that lined the fence. He froze in his tracks when, on one such scan, he caught sight of the passionate pile of plaid and canvas that his brother and best friend had become. Half a dozen thoughts raced through his head at the incongruous display, but being both sensible and loving both Dean and Cas, he finally settled on a variation of feeling happy for them. Being who he was as a person, Sam also knew he would never let them live that moment down. It was a cheering thought that would keep him warm the rest of the evening, until he could replace it with the more tangible warmth of flames.

It was only then that Sam remembered what the two of them were supposed to have been doing while he’d been running around town getting ready for the big showdown with Delmar and his ugly house. They were  _ supposed _ to be making sure no innocent civilians ran afoul of the ghost and got themselves killed. Sam let out an alarmed (and okay, maybe a little bit disgusted) noise and ran around to Melinda’s little outpost by the front gate. He found her sitting contentedly back in her folding chair, her table now illuminated by two chunky candles sitting in holly wreaths, reading something on her phone. He wasn’t entirely sure how to express his concerns without either alarming her or outing Dean and Cas, so he slowed his steps, cleared his throat, and tried to act casual.

“Hey, I’m back,” he said, stating the obvious as she shoved her phone in her pocket and blinked up at him in the relative darkness. “Been busy here?”

“Oh, hi Sam. No, you’re the first person who’s come walking up in at least twenty minutes. We had a few looky-loos who only wanted to stand at the gate and gossip but weren’t intrigued enough to pay the entrance fee. Especially after I let slip that I could guarantee that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was waiting for them inside.” Melinda gave him a little conspiratorial wink. “If we were gonna have a rush, I suspect it would’ve turned up by now.”

Sam nodded, relieved that whatever the hell had come over Dean and Cas hadn’t put anyone else at risk, and then frowned at himself for even having worried about it at all. The two of them could be dense, but they wouldn’t put anyone’s safety at risk because they were too wrapped up in their…  _ whatever…  _ to notice. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t. He glanced at his watch, noting they had just over an hour left to wait, before leaning back against the gate post in an attempt to catch a surreptitious glance at what his brother was up to.

He hadn’t been as nonchalant as he’d thought, because Melinda noticed the disconcerted look on his face and laughed.

“Yeah, they’ve been at it for a while now. I guess they got bored hiding out in the hedges. Can’t say I blame them,” she added with a sigh. “All I got to keep me company is this book a friend sent to me as a joke when that article posted in the paper. She thought I needed a better ghost story than the haunted McMansion.  _ Supernatural _ , it’s called.” She gave Sam an appraising look, raised eyebrow and all. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Sam cleared his throat, spent a few flustered moments wondering whether or not he should even attempt to lie to her, and then hung his head. “Yeah, funny story there…”

Melinda patted the folding chair next to hers. “Well, we got an hour to kill, and I’m all ears.”

He huffed out a breath and held up one hand in a  _ just a second _ gesture, and then yelled out to the yard in general, “I’m really happy for you guys, but please remember you’re not hiding as well as you think you are.”

After a beat, Cas replied with a tentative, “Thank you, Sam,” before Dean dissolved into laughter.

Several couples did eventually turn up, all of whom survived the tour without incident. Sam spent most of the hour answering Melinda’s increasingly stunned questions about how he and his brother became the subject of a series of novels written by God himself. Dean and Cas spent the hour keeping themselves warm without letting themselves get too hot. The narrator spent the hour wondering which of them had the more difficult task.

Sam eventually helped Melinda pack away her brochures and fold up her table and chairs. Dean and Cas emerged from their hideout behind the shrubs-- slightly more rumpled and infinitely happier than they’d been before-- but hung back in the shadows while Sam walked Melinda to her car and loaded up her gear.

“It’s been a very interesting day, Sam. I appreciate what you’ve done here.”

“Yeah, well,” Sam said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “We’re not quite done yet.”

“Do you need me to go in and shut off all the lights? Lock up like I usually do?”

“I hate to ask you to go back in there, but yeah. Gotta keep up appearances.”

Melinda nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay, then.” She shot a wary glance at the house and then gave Sam her best attempt at a smile.

“If you don’t want to go alone, I’m sure Cas would go with you again,” Sam offered.

Melinda raised an eyebrow and peered around Sam to where Dean and Cas now stood, their arms around each other and talking too quietly for her to pick up what they were saying. “I think he’s a little busy at the moment.”

Sam glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

“You know,” Melinda said, drawing Sam’s attention back. “I spent the afternoon wondering how long they’d been together, thinking they were too shy to come out to an old lady. Now I wonder if shy is even in their vocabulary.”

Sam practically choked. Not only at Melinda’s comment, but at what that might mean for his own future. “Ugh, I think I need to invest in noise cancelling headphones.”

⛪⛪⛪

Melinda went through her nightly routine, shutting off all the lights and thanking Delmar’s ghost profusely for tolerating the intrusion into his home. By the time she came back out, Sam, Dean and Cas were nowhere to be seen. As agreed, she drove into town and parked herself in a crowded restaurant to wile away the next few hours as conspicuously as possible. At least she’d have a solid alibi.

“So how are we doing this?” Dean asked as Sam handed bags of salt and jugs of kerosene over the fence.

“It’s probably the biggest thing we’ve ever had to torch. I told Melinda we’d do the best we could with it, but to give us a call if they have any more problems.”

Dean nodded. “So she knows the deal?”

“She knows enough.”

Dean and Sam each took one sack of salt and began walking the perimeter of the house, meeting up in the backyard and joining the unbroken ring just outside the kitchen window. When that was done, Dean opened the basement window that Cas had unlocked for them earlier on his walkthrough with Melinda, and all three of them gathered the rest of their gear and slipped inside. They walked through the house as quickly as they could, trailing salt and splashing every surface with kerosene along the way. Dean manfully held back tears as they doused the billiards table, the bar, and the home theater. If there had been any feasible way for him to smuggle a few choice items out of the house and back to the bunker, he would’ve done it in a heartbeat. Sam essentially tossed a bottle of kerosene at the reindeer in the Christmas room and slammed the door shut with immense satisfaction, and a quietly muttered, “Get bent, Rudolph.”

They covertly planted several electrical holiday decorations that Sam had tampered with enough to hopefully draw the blame for causing the fire, if there was anything left of the building for arson investigators to study. Then again, knowing the town’s ambivalent history with the house in the first place, as well as the tendency for spirits to wreak total destruction as they were ushered unceremoniously to the Other Side, it likely wouldn’t be much of a concern anyway.

Delmar showed up a couple of times to harass them with flickering lights and blaring holiday tunes, but the salt ring outside at least kept him manageable. He flung a nativity set at Sam’s head as he rushed through one bedroom, and hurled a bowl of orange pomanders at Dean after he sprinkled kerosene around the drafting table in Delmar’s office. Cas dodged several ineffective projectiles ranging from pine needle sachets in a bathroom to a rag doll dressed like an elf.

“How come he’s throwing pointy, heavy shit at me and Sam, and you get hit with tiny pillows?” Dean asked as they raced back to the open window. “How the fuck is that fair?”

“I think he likes me more than he likes you,” Cas replied.

Dean just grumbled, dropping his nearly empty jug of fuel on the pile of dried pine garland and full containers of kerosene they planted beneath the window as he jumped through to the grass outside. He pulled Cas through behind him and they all scrambled to the other side of the salt line to the relative safety of the lawn beyond. Dean still wasn’t entirely sure they shouldn’t be burning those topiaries.

“Who gets to light the match?” Dean asked, pulling a fresh book out of his pocket and holding it up like a prize.

Sam frowned and pushed his hand down. “Nobody. We’re not gonna get caught standing in the blast radius in case this thing goes up faster than we expect.” He knelt down and slid the window shut, sealing off the strong kerosene fumes, and then jumped back across the salt line and gestured for Dean and Cas to follow him back to where he’d left the car.

“I think we’re forgetting something,” Dean said as he settled in behind the wheel, looking over his shoulder at Cas in the back seat as Sam settled in front and slammed his door shut. “Like the fire.”

Sam calmly checked his watch and then counted down, “Five, four, three,” and then the entire building behind them burst into flames. Sam grinned as Dean jumped and turned around to see the conflagration. “I guess my watch is running a few seconds slow. So do you wanna stick around and see what happens, or do you wanna get the fuck outta here.”

Dean started the car, threw it in gear, and then calmly headed down the side road away from the scene so as to draw the least attention to themselves as possible. “Right. Getting the fuck outta here.”

As soon as they hit the highway, he opened it up and sped toward home. There was no way Delmar’s ghost had survived that fireball, and with a grin, he suspected most of the creepy lawn decorations had succumbed, as well.

A few miles away, Melinda got a phone call from the mayor, giving her the terrible news that Delmar’s house had mysteriously burned to the ground and the town’s long legal nightmare was seemingly at an end. She felt like celebrating, and for some inexplicable reason, she ordered herself a slice of apple pie as she toasted her new friends and returned her attention to her book. She was already planning on downloading the sequel.   



	4. Chapter 4

“Ugh, no more Christmas bonfire cases,” Dean said as they trudged into the bunker a little after midnight. He sniffed his jacket that still stank of canned cinnamon stick and aerosol pine spray mixed with gasoline. He pulled it off and tossed it in the laundry room on his way to his room. “And we’re definitely having another pie day tomorrow. All this fake Christmas shit is just not right. I’ll take the real stuff any day.”

“So will I,” Cas agreed, peeling off his jacket and flannel and tossing it after Dean’s. “I enjoyed learning to bake with you, Dean.”

Sam, following along a few yards behind them, cleared his throat as Dean reached out and pulled Cas to his side. Dean turned to glare at Sam over his shoulder, but Sam smiled in return.

“Just so you both know, I really am happy for you.”

Dean stared for a moment while Cas turned from beneath his arm to face Sam. “That means a lot to me, Sam.” Cas shot a nervous glance at Dean before pressing on. “I know that this change in our family dynamic is unexpected, and sudden, but I believe we’re both relieved that you’re taking it so well. Your approval is important to me.”

Sam bit his lower lip and nodded a few times so that he wouldn’t laugh outright. He finally composed himself enough to reach out and give Cas a hearty pat on the shoulder. With as serious a face as he could muster, and then a quick smirk at Dean, he broke. “Dude, you have no idea how not-sudden this is. Maybe I was a little surprised to find you trying to examine each other’s tonsils behind a shrub when you were supposed to be on a stakeout, but now that I’ve had a chance to think back, a lot of your,” Sam waved one hand up and down at them indicating how they were still attached at the hip, “your… whatever this is, makes perfect sense. You’re both the least subtle and most frustrating people I’ve ever watched dance around each other. I think I’ve been waiting for this  _ unexpected development _ for like… a decade. Before tonight, I would’ve put my money on global warming melting the whole planet before you figured yourselves out. So congrats or whatever. Just give me ten minutes to get ready for bed and lock myself in my room before you start defiling the entire bunker.”

He gave them both a very serious glare, satisfied only when they nodded back, wide eyed. He pushed between them and strode off toward his room, leaving them standing dumbstruck in the hall.

“Hey, at least we didn’t have to dig up a grave tonight,” Dean called out after him, trailing off as he realized how dumb that sounded.

Cas snorted out a restrained little laugh, and drew Dean’s attention back from frowning after his brother. Instead, he frowned at Cas, who smiled fondly, if a bit hesitantly.

“I appreciate not having to dig up a grave, if that’s any consolation,” Cas told him, and Dean smiled.

“Yeah, but we still had to spend a few hours on the cold, hard ground. I’m getting too old for that shit,” Dean said, working out a kink in his back.

Cas shrugged. “A hot shower might help with that.”

“Yeah, maybe in the morning. I, uh…” he trailed off, wondering if whatever strange and unique bubble of intimacy they’d shared watching the sun set had faded under the harsh light and cold concrete reality of the bunker.

Cas stopped him, resting one hand on Dean’s chest. “Where is your heart leading you now, Dean? Because mine is still ready to follow.”

Dean blinked at him, his breath catching and that little firework sparking back to life. He reached up and laid his hand over Cas’s. “I think we should probably consider it an early Christmas present for Sam and go figure that out in my room.”

Cas smiled wider and leaned in for a kiss. At this point, the narrator backed away slowly because she’s not a creeper. Dean and Cas had figured out where their hearts had been leading them all along. Luckily that place was far enough from Sam’s room that he wouldn’t be traumatized for life. At least not that night.

Christmas morning, after a week and a half of putting up with their increasingly bold public displays of affection-- and again, the narrator is being generous with her wording because she is not a creeper-- Sam pointedly unwrapped the gift he’d bought himself of top of the line noise-cancelling headphones. It’s been reported to the narrator that Dean and Cas did not take the hint, and have continued to defend their less than covert makeout sessions with the sappy but undeniably sweet declaration that they’re only following their hearts. Sam can’t find it in his heart to be mad too about it. They do make a lot of pie, now. Sam usually just leaves them to it, and wanders off to find them another hunt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Leave it to me to combine McMansion Hell, Christmas, and an overly-involved narrator into one fic. I hope it wasn't too much...
> 
> Don't forget to check out all the other fics in the Holiday Mixtape 2018 collection. Also come find me on the tumbls. I'm [mittensmorgul](mittensmorgul.tumblr.com).


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